Gastronomy612′s Weblog

bigger than a bread box (or toaster oven)

I know, and take full responsibility over the fact that this pastry looks like either baby Moses in a blanket, or the head of the Elephant Man.  It’s repulsively huge, but entirely delicious.

Making the dough is a process in and of itself, of which you can read about here, where I got the inspiration to make the braid to begin with.  If deciding to make this braid, offer yourself, and the dough plenty of time, as the actual lamination process is quite time consuming (roughly 2-2.5 hours).  Despite this, the method of making it is quite easy.  You will also note that Culinography produced two braids out of this recipe, but this information was left out of the recipe itself, thus leaving me with Elephant Man braid.

After I left the dough to refrigerate over night, I started on making the apple filling, by using my second-favorite kitchen gadget, the apple peeler/corer.  I speared my apples through the prongs and turned the crank, leaving me with a long string of peel and a Slinky-like apple, which I cut into quarters.

I coated sliced apples with cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla extract in place of a real vanilla bean.  (Do you know how much vanilla beans cost at the grocery store!?!?  Ten bucks for one pod!  But it’s OK, one bean is equal to 2-4 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract.)  In a large pan, I started melting four tablespoons of butter until it got nice and brown, at which time I added the sliced and coated apples.  I stirred them around in the pan until the sugars began to caramelize and thicken, at which point I took them off the burner to cool.  To speed up the process I laid them on a pan with parchment paper and put them in the refrigerator to cool while I again began working the laminated dough.  I rolled it, let it rest, rolled it and so on.

When it was the right dimensions and consistency, I made slits in the dough in order to braid it, and pulled the apples out of the refrigerator – it was show time.  I spooned them down the middle and began “braiding” away after tucking the top end in.

When all the pieces were tucked in and ready, I coated it with some egg wash, and put an oiled piece of Saran wrap over it to proof.  It was only two hours later that my once quaint braid began to resemble Moses and it was time to throw him in the oven to bake for merely 20-25 minutes because of its light and fluffy texture.

It came out light and fluffy, the perfect pastry dough with a sweet flavor.  Many pieces did not contain the apple filling, but for the ones that did, it was blissful.

It was a great first try, and I learned what I would do over again given the same recipe:

• Either halve the recipe, or make two braids
• Seal the braid in more so apple ooze doesn’t seep out
• Do not bake or proof on parchment paper
• Keep a better eye on the oven so as to not at all burn the delicate bottom